First of all, judging by the comic-book it seems to me that Google has been focusing primarily on usability and advancing web applications through faster JavaScript execution. A lot of other buzzwords are mentioned, but of them all, I’ll bet those two are the ones that’ll set Chrome apart from the already magnificent competition.

See also: full screenshot gallery.

Looking at what few glimpses we’ve yet seen of Chrome, it’s quite clear that Google has taken inspiration (and admits to having done so) from the other major players. There’s no file menu and the tabs are now above the addressbar. Removing all the features that aren’t immediately necessary in day-to-day browsing has effectively made a very clean and cruft-free UI. Whether we’ll have to stick with that hideous-looking bluish skin or whether Chrome will be able to use the operating system default skin, remains to be seen. (Small update on this from the beta: It seems that for at least the window frames, Google is able to harness the Vista “glass” effect. Text-areas, however, are still not Vista textareas but more like Firefox 2 1px bordered squares).

Putting the tabs right at the top, to me, is the most interesting aspect of Chrome. Doing this puts much more value on tabs: suddenly using tabs isn’t an option, it’s an integral feature you have to learn.

A while back I tried tackling tabs and found that having them be right at the top felt most logical. After all, navigation controls are related to the contents of each tab so there’s really no reason to physically dislodge the two. An added benefit for Windows users would be that when the window was maximized, tabs will be close to the top edge of your screen. Screen edges are prime real-estate when talking usability — just ask Paul Fitt — so this would be worth working towards¹. It was an interesting challenge, and while the result at the time felt a tad off, Google has now canonized it. Behold my totally prescient prediction:

Focusing so much on one tab one webpage can also be seen as a statement of intent. With Calendar, Gmail and Docs, Google has clearly positioned themselves as application providers. With so much focus on the tabs, your browser might actually start to look like an operating system in itself; each tab representing an application in your little operating system microcosmos. Suddenly it’s not so far off to speculate that Google Chrome is the oft-rumoured Google Operating System². Even the name itself, Chrome, refers to the the surrounding frames and borders of an application window.

Give that some thought. If all your applications ran in your browser (even today, apps such as Photoshop can do so), whether you ran Windows or MacOS would be moot. You could simply switch to Ubuntu as long as it could run Chrome — it would save you quite a few bucks.

It’s interesting to note that Google chose WebKit, Safari’s HTML engine, as opposed to Firefox’s Gecko engine. Google argues the former has a cleaner codebase, but no matter what, it’s a slap in the face of Mozilla. I bet it’s made even more bitter considering Ben Goodger of former Firefox fame is now working on Chrome. What this means to Gecko and XUL will be fascinating to see. Considering the performance gains Gecko got in Firefox 3, Gecko might not die altogether.

There’s a question of why Google wants to do this. The passionate Firefox user might argue (and be right about) that Google could save oodles of cash in not having to pay Mozilla for their search engine to be included in the browser³. The more people used Chrome over Firefox, the less Google would have to pay Mozilla. That being said, I would guess the amount Google pays Firefox is considered peanuts to the brightly colored company, peanuts they would gladly continue to pony up as long as it annoyed Microsoft. Also, Chrome is open source, so there’s really no reason to think anyone at Google wants to cannibalize Mozillas marketshare. Even so, that’s going to happen to some extent. That, or Chrome fails miserably.

The other aspect where Chrome sets itself apart, the new JavaScript engine, I believe tells more about Googles true agenda. Essentially the engine executes JavaScript — the programming language used for most of Googles webapps — way faster in Chrome. Possibly, Google will even be able to do things in Chrome they can’t do in any of the other browsers⁴.

Following the development and adoption of Chrome is going to be super interesting. What will it look like? Will it really be as fast as they boast? And what new apps will Google build for it? Will those apps work in other browsers? Clearly Google is playing chess, and Chrome is one of their pieces. I can’t wait to see who gets checkmated.

Update: Go grab the beta.
Update: Added a screenshot gallery.

1. Whether Chrome will actually utilizise this benefit, we’ll have to wait for the beta to see. Update: Google Chrome does make use of the screen edges for the tabs! Impressive.
2. Taking in to account that JavaScript will be runtime-compiled in Chrome, I find there’s very little doubt left that Google wants us to start seeing the web as more than just information
3. Then again, Google just extended that contract for a full 3 years.
4. Unless those browsers adopt the also-open-source V8 JavaScript engine

Bill Maher, famed standup comedian and talkshow host, is about to unleash a religion-critical documentary on the silver screen. Titled Religulous, Maher will be arguing that religion is, well, ridiculous. Yes it is and thank you Bill Maher, for it’s high time it was shouted out loudly. Watch the trailer:

Evidently, Bill Maher takes a subtly humorous approach to the “controversial” topic of religion. If that’s what it takes to make people think, fine. For the masses, however, I’m hoping Religulous will act as a sock-puppet-simple explanation for neo-atheism and chisel out in stone that there’s a difference between being critical of religion and simply being intolerant.

So, what’s wrong with religion?

Before Maher gets his chance, I’ll try my luck in explaining it. Religions — by definition — share the core trait that they require belief in something supernatural, i.e. something that’s absolutely impossible to prove, observe or test. Religions hold this leap of faith in high regard and rewards believers with a number of preset answers that provide comfort in the difficult situations we must all face in this condition known as life. For instance, the belief that we have an afterlife is certainly more comforting than the idea that upon dying we simply revert to that state we were in prior to being born. Nothingness. Dust.

The comfort given by these answers begs reverence. It makes us want to believe. So much that if anyone tries to challenge these beliefs, they’re met with resistance. Sometimes violently so. For that reason, most likely, we’ve all been raised to respect faith in all its incarnations. Herein lies part of the problem.

In this modern day and age, most parts of the holy texts seem grossly obsolete. For example, I’ll wager we can all agree that no sane person would think that a child cursing his parents should be put to death for doing so (Leviticus 20:9). For the very same reason, most Christians I know of disregard Leviticus altogether. That is, except for a few of them, who happen to agree with the passages that claim homosexuality to be detestable. Quite simply, they order up the convenient parts. With fries.

The crux of it is that all religious doctrine is cherry-picked all the time. The parts that speak to people are revered, the barbaric parts are ignored. People differ on these parts, but hey, faith is a personal thing and no one else’s business, right?

Because religious doctrine is cherry-picked, it can be used to justify any action. How can we approve of a faith-based vote against abortion and yet condemn people blowing themselves up or ramming planes into building in the name of their god? The motivations for both actions are identical.

The problem with religion is that simply having faith is sufficient justification for any irrational idea.

For centuries, religion has polluted and poisoned everything, sometimes under the guise of “moral values”. Stem-cell research — potentially the most rewarding medicinal area of research — has been blocked at every step of the way citing a ridiculous misunderstanding of what “life” is¹. Science is frowned upon when it contradicts the holy texts, prompting the teaching instead of creationist pseudo-science. Contraceptives are buried in favor of “abstinence bracelets” which are unlikely to help stop the spread of AIDS in Africa. In every aspect of society, whenever faith is invoked, completely irrational ideas are allowed to infect vital decisions.

Be honest and really give this some time in the noodle. When you really think about it, most religious practices are batshit insane, don’t you agree? Judging from the trailer, Maher has captured that in excrutiating clarity. I do expect to be chuckling at Religulous, but nervously so because it depicts reality.

The real gist of it is that we can’t just agree to disagree anymore. One side of the argument is right and the other side of the argument is dangerously fucking nuts. Don’t just stand there when a faithbased vote steps on your rights. Please reconsider your prepubescent flirt with “spirituality” — very probably there really isn’t much more “between heaven and earth” than you think. And YOU — “tolerant liberal” — your idea of tolerance isn’t helping anyone. Respecting completely irrational faith-based ideas in the name of live and let live will not be reciprocated. You only help perpetuate the problem. So take a deep breath and grow some brass ones. If Maher can do it, so can you.

It’ll take courage to be able to pick the rational side, but I’ll salute you for it.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
–Thucydides

1. Scratching your butt kills millions of living cells; how is that different?

A month ago, I blocked access to visitors viewing these words through the archaic goggles of Internet Explorer 6 (hereafter referred to as IE6). Sporting a tailor made message to said visitors, this block effectively cut off (theoretically) 25% of all visitors.

Reactions were mixed. One commenter suggested that blocking access was drastic and recommended instead that I serve a CSS-style free website instead (it would look like this). Another commenter, Brendan Cullen on his weblog, found the block drastic but welcomed the stand. In both cases, I promised I’d reevaluate the decision in a month.

That means now.

To put it shortly: not having to worry about dealing with Internet Explorer 6 and its bugs and limitations has been one of the best things I’ve done with this website in a while. It’s been a proverbial rock lifted off my chest. I can do things I couldn’t before, I can do them faster, and I can do them without worrying.

There’s been tradeoffs, of course, and counterarguments.

Building websites that do not work in IE6 is just lazy.

This is both true and retrosexually untrue. It’s true that not having to worry about Internet Explorer 6 saves you hours, possibly days of extra work. That fact alone should — if not entirely dispell — then at least muddy the “lazy” argument a bit. More importantly, however, some things are just not possible in IE6. Things such as transparency, very complex and/or crowded layouts and even some JavaScript features are lacking. It’s no coincidence that both Google, Apple and even Microsoft themselves are phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6.

Aren’t you “sawing your own branch” and alienating potential clients?

Sure, possibly. I’m also educating them. Potentially that’s the more weighty argument.

In all honesty, most of my clients I haven’t gotten via this website. Clients have found me through recommendations by friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances. Clients have phoned me up with their problem and we’ve discussed solutions. What I’ve found is that when I explain to them what’s possible when disregarding IE6, they understand. Perhaps I’ve been lucky.

As such, and this thrills me, I sense that things are in motion to move the web forwards. More and more clients prioritize simplicity, search engine friendliness and modernness in their websites. Either they’ve been burnt enough times by useless Flash websites, or they’re simply starting to understand how the web really works. The bottom line is, I’ve had little or no negative client feedback by blocking a seven year old piece of software.

Blocking access is drastic, compared to alternatives such as not serving CSS.

This is possibly the best argument I’ve heard so far and more than any other argument, one that got me thinking and re-evaluating. Serving a style-free website is so easy, still much less drastic than actually blocking access. On the other hand, the message sent is more vague and less urgent. So, to truly decide whether to change the course, I’ve weighed the various reasons.

• The sense of urgency is somehow lost when access isn’t blocked.
• By not blocking, are we really doing visitors a favor?
• By serving a style-free site, we will be sending a message but possibly we won’t be alienating visitors.
• A blocked visitor might be spiteful and cling to IE6 instead of upgrading.
• A visitor viewing a style-free site might think “this is it” and not get the message.

As much as I want to force people to move on, I’m now leaning towards an unblock. My goal is two-fold: 1) having people upgrade and 2) not having to worry about an old browser. Serving the website without style will accomplish goal #2. If I combine that with a pretty clean message explaining why they’re served a less than ideal view, I might even accomplish goal #1.

Therefore, I’ll now be serving all counterproductive visitors a style-free view of this website, sporting a huge No IE6s badge.

Gato Barbieri - I Want You (Click the blue button to play)

This completely unscientific list of questions were powered and ranked by Google.

What’s the difference between a category and a tag?

I’ve been asked that question a number of times, and the answer always escapes me. Reading that Microsoft will be redesigning their Xbox interface, dropping fixed sections and adopting a non-hierarchical structure reminded me of tags vs. categories. Now I think the difference between the two is paradigm sized.

Gmail calls them labels. Flickr calls them tags. In both cases, they’re simply ID pins you put on anything you feel fit together. For instance, you might put a label called “music” on both Sonic Youth and Rihanna content, but an additional label called “outstanding” would only be tacked on to the former. Categories, on the other hand, approach things differently and discriminate content into hierarchical sub-categories. The idea is that a tree-like structure allows for more directed browsing of the categorized contents.

As such, the most elaborate difference between tagging and categorizing content is the ad-hoc nature and lack of hierarchy inherent in tagging mechanisms. Tags are born equal and earn their fame with repeated use. This encourages the creation of many more tags than you would create categories, further refining casual users ability to drill through the depths of specific content.

Because of the casual nature of tags, the creation of single-use throwaway tags is not a problem. The more tags, the better¹ — so much that it might even make sense to allow end users to tag your content. Think about it, users plow through your Mariana Trench deep archive leaving little golden crumb trails in their wake.

Tags are the cake and the whipped cream of usable future interfaces. I find that a safe bet.

When tagging mechanisms are added to various content exploration interfaces, quite a few things become immediately obsolete. Any hierarchical structure such as folders become near-worthless when you can see the “folder contents” of your choice by simply clicking the appropriate tag. The mystery meat discoverability problems inherent in having hidden subfolders go the way of the dodo; in its stead is a marxist non-hierarchy.

The requirements for tags seem simple: a flat structure and scalability. Of course, simplicity is no simple thing.

For one thing, the flat structure of tags begs the question from the couch potato: which tags are the good ones? Sizing up tags according to usage popularity — tag clouds — only lets us know which tags have the most content. Picking out the ones that hide the good stuff requires a human editor.

The other thing, scalability, doesn’t come easy. For a moment, let’s forget the fact that categories are usually lists, just like tags, and instead visualize a finite number of sections. Because each section of an interface can hold content according to its section title, sections can be compared to parent categories. When there’s a finite number of sections, we can design them like tabs or stacks or whatever physical metaphor you can think of. Now what if we need a new section but we’ve run out of room? Well you’d be screwed and you should have designed a scalable interface. Enter the PlayStation and Xbox dashboards.

The PlayStation 3 dashboard uses a cross media bar, or XMB for short. The XMB consists of a horizontal line of icons floating in space, as many icons as are needed. Highlight one icon and another list of icons will cross the bar, allowing you to select sub contents vertically.

The current Xbox dashboard, on the other hand, uses a blade-like interface; tabs span the height of the screen and sections are selected by flipping left and right. Like with all other section-divided interfaces, the amount of room for sections is finite, hence putting quite the responsibility on naming those sections. Have you tried this interface? Where would you look for downloadable games; In “Xbox Live”? Or in “Games”? Suffice to say, discoverability is low and scalability virtually non-existant.

It seems, however, that Microsoft, come next Xbox system update, will be switching to a scalable interface to the system.

Could this be the contents of a Halo tag?

Instead of the finite amount of blades, the Xbox will sport a Playstation XMB-like cross-navigation system allowing for an infinite amount of vertical and horizontal sections. While the not-entirely-flat structure will require some drilling, at least the potential will be there to create clever, throw-away content-hubs that simplify finding content. Microsoft calls this the “New Xbox Experience”, and they think it’ll do well in Europe. I say it might. But it all depends on whether they dare use this new tag-like, flat and scalable interface structure the way it should be used. That is, like you would use tags and not categories.

The difference between a tag and a category is that one tries to organize chaos and falls flat; the other accepts chaos and deals with it.

1. To a certain degree, of course. As with all good things.

The Dark Knight is clearly a 5 star movie. The cinematography, the production value and Ledgers Joker alone earns home those stars. However, The Dark Knight is not without its flaws. For one thing, at three hours, the film is plainly too long; not just for physiological reasons, but because it suffers from the same problems many other films of late do. Too many stories being told at once, none of them being told sufficiently.

Worth mentioning is that the soundtrack, which builds upon the rather uninspired score for the first one, is far better this time. It’s not nearly as good as Elfmans outstanding Batman (1988) score, but compared to nearly all recent movies it stands tall.

Point of note: personally I find it a real pity that Maggie Gyllenhaal didn’t play Rachel Dawes in the first one. She does a much better job than Katie Holmes did. Still, recasting such a major character is irritating.

On the bottom line, The Dark Knight is an excellent but flawed movie. It does seem to do well at the box office and deservedly so. In the end I’d much prefer it to reign the charts over Titanic.

We only use a single image file for all four rounded corners. Thusly:

The above is 22×22px. So in order for this to become four corners, we’ll crop it (using CSS) to an 11×11px size. Because we don’t want to use JavaScript or oodles of extra CSS, we accept the inevitable. Our rounded corner boxes need a little extra markup.

HTML Code

<div class="mybox">
  <div class="ctl"></div><div class="ctr"></div>

    <p>My content here</p>

  <div class="cbl"></div><div class="cbr"></div>
</div>

Fortunately, the benefits are immediately visible in the shorter than usual rounded corners CSS.

CSS Code

/* Box */
.mybox {
  background-color: #99BCDE;
  position: relative;
  padding: 20px;
  }

/* Corners */
div.ctl, div.ctr, div.cbl, div.cbr { /* All corners */
  height: 11px;
  width: 11px;
  position: absolute;
  }  
div.ctl, div.ctr { /* Top corners */
  top: 0;
  }
div.cbl, div.cbr { /* Bottom corners */
  bottom: 0;
  }
div.ctl { /* Top left corner */
  background: url(/media/corners_darkblue.gif) no-repeat left top;
  left: 0;
  }
div.ctr { /* Top right corner */
  background: url(/media/corners_darkblue.gif) no-repeat right top;
  right: 0;
  }
div.cbl { /* Bottom left corner */
  background: url(/media/corners_darkblue.gif) no-repeat left bottom;
  left: 0;
  }
div.cbr { /* Bottom right corner */
  background: url(/media/corners_darkblue.gif) no-repeat right bottom;
  right: 0;
  }

What happens here is that the the corner image file is attached to the superfluous classes ctl, ctr, cbl, cbr, (ctl = “Corner, Top Left” and so on). The full corner image is then cropped down to show only the wanted corner. Finally, using absolute positioning, the four corners are placed in the top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right respectively. Using absolute positioning, cleverly, there’s no need to worry about margin, padding, floats, and so on. A breeze, in other words. A CSS breeze.

There’s one downside; the method won’t work if you need a background image or tile, as each corner has a burnt in matte fill. If you need rounded corners and a background image, and if you don’t care about Internet Explorer or Opera, you could just round the corners in CSS3:

.mybox {
  -moz-border-radius: 5px;   /* Firefox */
  -khtml-border-radius: 5px;   /* Konquerer */
  -webkit-border-radius: 5px;   /* Webkit / Safari */
  border-radius: 5px;    /* All other CSS3 capable browsers */
  }

Unfortunately, most people use browsers without those delicious CSS3 capabilities. So unless you want to point at them and laugh, you’ll probably have to go through the motions. The above mentioned motions, I’ve found, have been the least tiresome.

1. Search engine friendly would use only semantic markup. No empty tags.

There’s a new member of the No Poster Family. It’s called I Want To Believe, and it’s a remake of one of my one of my all time favourite posters.

Some of you will recognize the theme of the poster from the TV series, The X-Files, where it graced Mulders office-wall. That poster, in turn, was — for copyright reasons — a remake of the original one. It’s all in this digital pamphlet by Famous Pictures Magazine. The poster was an apt choice for Mulders wall, as the basic log line of the whole show might as well have been the believer and the skeptic explore the supernatural.

There’s a subtle both hilarious and spot on sarcasm to the original poster. People, we, mostly everyone, wants to believe. We want to believe in UFOs, we want to believe in god, we want to believe in the easter bunny. Some of us don’t believe in either of those, but most of us want to.

The task seemed fairly simple at the time: add music to the Shuffle. One could argue (and I have, on numerous occasions) that adding files should be as simple as opening the iPod as a drive and dragging files to it. It’s not, so I installed iTunes, or rather, because iTunes is not available separately, I installed QuickTime as well. The suck-o-meter chirped there, but I dismissed that as being simply an inconvenience.

Installing iTunes + Quicktime, I was given the option to automatically update iTunes and Quicktime. This was checked by default, so I unchecked; I don’t need the bleeding edge versions for copying files, and I certainly don’t need another system service running all the 99% of the time when I don’t have iTunes open. Result: fiercely unchecked along with an option to take me to the iTunes Music Store every time iTunes opens.

The installer completes and asks me to reboot. Suck-o-meter is now at 1. Two if I couldn’t probably blame some of the reboot-need on Windows.

With the computer rebooted, I plug in the iPod and start iTunes. Upon program launch, iTunes kindly tells me it’s noticed my iPod is plugged in. It even sees that there are files on it that weren’t added to the Shuffle via iTunes (correct, because they were added using Floola). Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t support adding music to the iPod from multiple computers. The (only) solution: Erase & Sync. With an insatiable urge to spew torrents of swear-words, this brings the suck-o-meter to 5. Seriously? Who the hell is iTunes to tell me what to put on my iPod, or from where?

Alright, so I erase everything that’s on my iPod in order to be able to update the firmware and add new music. Because unless I do that, the iPod doesn’t even show up in iTunes. Erase completed: okay, it shows up now. That, and a banner in the bottom called “iTunes Mini Store”. I thought I disabled that during the installer? Not so. I have to close that again. So I enter the preferences to see if I can’t disable it there, after all, I just want to update and add to my iPod. The preferences tell me dark secrets; despite my having unchecked (fiercely) the option to automatically update my software, a big checkmark remains in a box that says “Check for updates automatically”. That’s like an eighties TV-show cliché of having too many dates for the one evening; it’s bound to go wrong, hilariously so. Except when iTunes is doing it, it’s not hilarious. It’s 2 points on the suck-o-meter. We’re now at 7.

The suck-o-meter stops at 10. We still have a ways to go before everything implodes. The status is an erased and synced iPod, ready to be updated and recieve a few files. The update goes smoothly. As for the files, in this case, they are rather large audiobooks, so i simply open the folder containing the three files instead of have iTunes index my entire system to add them to my music library. Dragging them from the folder to the iPod icon in the iTunes sidebar seems logical right? Not possible. Oh right, my friend whom I had an almost heated iTunes discussion with, yesterday, told me that iTunes is all about playlists. Fine, I drag the file to the playlist area: success (albeit an unintuitive one)! Dragging that playlist to the iPod in the sidebar works. The iPod is syncing. While syncing I decide to rename the playlist “Audio Books”. Not knowing or trusting whether renaming in iTunes works like it does in Windows (select and wait or select and press F2), I right-click the playlist. No rename option. Can’t I rename? Even if the Windows standard way of renaming works, a context-menu option should be there as well to provide discoverability. Not so, but F2 works. The undiscoverable-in-the-name-of-optimizing-and-simplifying interface design still earns iTunes a total of 8 points on the suck-o-meter.

The iPod is updated and full of audiobooks now. The experience getting there has been an ugly, way-above-average 8 on the suck-o-meter. Comparing iTunes to most other media players excluding Real Player (that would just be unfair, or would it?), getting there was Adobe Photoshop CS3 Etch-a-Sketch slow, confusing and excrutiating. That’s another point on the suck-o-meter.

Now that everything is updated and added, I don’t expect to add files in a while; it takes time to listen through three audiobooks, after all, so simply closing iTunes should settle my woes and remind me that while the iTunes experience can be excrutiating, it is only brief.

I would like to tell you that story of the happy little elf who could simply close iTunes and be done with it. I really would. But this is not a happy story.

What does “closing an application” mean to you? To me it means that the entirety of that application is unloaded. Apparently Apple chose a more beatnik approach to this question, adding services that continue running long after the red X has been pressed. In fact, iTunes secretly installed three permanently memory resident programs: iPodHelper, AppleMobileDeviceService and iTunesHelper. For the computer un-initiated those might be all you’d discover running. But there’s more. Installed in the hidden service layer of Windows, we find Apples Bonjour network service. If we look for it, we even find installed a separate Apple Software Update application (despite us twice having told iTunes we don’t want to update anything, ever). Poor suck-o-meter that only goes to 10. This one goes to 11.

Let’s summarize. Wanting to update my iPod and add three audio book files, required me to reboot, uncheck update services I thought I had already unchecked and erase all my non-iTunes-added-music, all the while having to suffer through arrogantly unintuitive slow interfaces and Music Store ads until finally having to deal with unwanted memory resident applications. Be honest now: is that even remotely defensible coming from a company that’s supposed to be “big” on intuitive interfaces and easy to use hardware and software? I mean, think about it, and really get it in there. If you were not allowed to use the arguments “Get a mac”, or “App X also sucks”, could you even begin to explain why iTunes on Windows must reek like this? Because that’s what it does, reek!

I want you to imagine, for a second, a world wherein Apple did not require you to use iTunes with your iPod. I know it’s unrealistic, but for the sake of it, explore the what if. Do you see more iPods sold? I do. I see more iPods sold, and I see myself having an iPhone. And then I wake up and smell the coffee.

Update: Welcome Reddit’ers. Let’s hope the server can handle the traffic and please feel free to vent in the comments.

Kung Fu Panda is gorgeous and hilarious. It’s deliciously produced and impressively crafted from the very start. It’s eminently watchable and highly recommendable.

That earns you four huge hearts. To earn more, there need be levels of peril and emotional payoff, perhaps even something unexpected.

Hancock is an extremely odd movie. It tries to combine braindead superhero action with comedy and pseudo-deep themes of self-realization, purpose and awakening. Perhaps that’s theoretically possible, but it certainly didn’t work this time. Had Hancock been two movies — the action comedy and the for your consideration reel, probably at least one movie been a better for it.

Hancock has moments of mild fun and action. Watch Hancock on DVD.

One day I woke up and felt like shedding my old clothes¹. Since I make my living doing websites, cleverer people than me might have advised that I do that years ago. I’d tell them that redesigns are essentially bad, and should only be done if you have really good reasons to do so. Fortunately, I’ve had plenty of reason for quite a while.

At one point I had a love-affair with liquid-width designs — you know, designs where if you scale your browser window, the contents stretch to fit? As it turns out, we were starcrossed lovers. This, in part due to James apt observations that the appearance of fullpage zoom spells the death of said mistress. I happen to agree.

Fullpage zoom is only available in modern browsers — nearly all browsers built after the year 2001, or in humanspeak: not IE6. That means users of said browser aren’t welcome here any more. That includes potential clients for my webdesign business; yep, I’m that serious. I won’t build your crap anymore! Shoo! Go back to your Ford T and speak of how the old days were better. All those are met with an unwelcome message.

I’m a fan of both simple, changing and not changing designs. Those are three core values that are fairly hard to wed. My attempt at doing so spells square shapes, no cut corners, a single column (another bandwagon I’m late to join) and changing backgrounds. Right now I’m really satisfied with the current Apophysis generated fractal flame gracing the underbelly of this vehicle of text, but it’ll change. From time to time. That and colors.

In fact, at one point I wanted every color to be so customizable that I tried to concoct deadly mechanisms to achieve my goals. The idea was to upload vectorized SVG icons, and colorize and convert them to PNGs on the fly, serving iconography fitted to the time of day, my mood, heck, even your mood. No such luck, this time around.

I also ditched the tabs;

Before:

After:

Today, well, even back when I added the tabs in the first place, tabs indicate instant effect. This being an HTML powered website (the best type of powered website), the effects were never instant. So no more tabs, except on the frontpage, where the effect is instant. I knew this all along, but I told myself that I wanted to unite the various sections and bring focus to other content than just this journal. I have no such illusions any more, now I just want you to look once at my contact page, because I think it looks really nice.

1. By the way, I’ve gathered a little wardrobe of discarded clothes, you can see all the previous no-designs there